Redefining the Learning Leader Role: Elevating Learning Strategies for Organizational Excellence - podcast episode cover

Redefining the Learning Leader Role: Elevating Learning Strategies for Organizational Excellence

Feb 06, 202440 min
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Episode description

In the inaugural episode of the Practitioner-Scholar, The Penn Chief Learning Officer Podcast, host Melissa Monti talks extensively with Dr. Keith Keating, Chief Learning and Talent Officer for BDO, a global consulting firm. Dr. Keating shares his challenging personal learning journey, having dropped out of formal schooling at 15 and subsequently recognizing the power of learning.

They discuss Dr. Keating's detailed insights on effective and strategic learning in the business sector. Dr. Keating emphasizes the role of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, in creating efficient learning frameworks. He also reflects on the shift from a transactional to a strategic approach in learning leadership. They address the talent gap issue in organizations and the need for skills development, retraining, and continued learning among workers. The conversation encompasses views on the value of lifelong learning, design thinking, and the role of learning leaders in alleviating job loss fears associated with AI.

The episode also deep-dives into Dr. Keating's cumulative work, "The Trusted Learning Advisor," which looks to redefine the perception of learning leaders in organizations today. The book caters to every L&D practitioner while emphasizing strategic and value-driven relationships.

You can connect with Dr. Keating on LinkedIn, or through his personal website

If you would like to learn more about the book, visit https://www.thetrustedlearningadvisor.com/ 

Explore the diverse range of high-quality master’s and doctoral degree programs on the Penn GSE website.

Transcript

Melissa

Hello, and welcome to our inaugural edition of the Practitioner Scholar, a Penn Chief Learning Officer podcast. I'm Melissa Monti, and I will be your host. We are very excited to be here for our first episode where we will use the time to I'm going to explore some of the great work and successes behind some of the alumni of the Penn Chief Learning Officer Program, or Penn CLO as it's known.

It's actually an executive doctoral program through the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. And I'm actually a current student of this program. The course of study focuses on organizational learning, leadership, and development within the public and private working sectors. It's also known as a scholar practitioner program. That means that while there is an academic research component, a lot of what we learn can be applied to the workplace through best practices.

Thought leadership and creating a framework to be a trusted learning partner. Speaking of which we are excited to introduce our first guest, Dr. Keith Keating. He serves as the chief learning and talent officer for BDO, a global consulting firm. He is also the author of the groundbreaking learning and development practitioners guide, the trusted learning advisor.

A sought after keynote speaker, he is also an advocate for talent development and emphasizes human talent as the cornerstone of organizational success. Dr. Keating also received his Master of Education and Doctor of Education degrees from the Penn Chief Learning Officer Program . Dr. Keating, thank you so much for joining us today. May I call you Keith?

Keith

Absolutely, Melissa. Thank you. And it's a pleasure to be here on our first inaugural episode.

Melissa

Absolutely. Thank you again. We have several topics on today's agenda for you, which include your newly released book, of course, Specific Learning and Development Frameworks, and your thoughts on incorporating these into Fortune 500 companies and beyond. We also have some lighthearted questions for you to help inspire us all to engage in a lifelong learning journey. But first, we would love to take a few minutes. to get to know you as a person and also a human.

You've been very open in the past about your beginnings and how education looked for you during your younger years. Can you tell us a little bit more about that journey?

Keith

Absolutely. Our backgrounds of course are like our fingerprints, very unique. And for me, I struggled significantly with school and education growing up. My father was in the military, so we moved every year, basically, and my formative years were in Germany, Korea, Japan, and so when I did finally move to the U. S., I was definitely mal aligned to the education system. And I just struggled so much that eventually I dropped out when I was 15.

And I think that's been a driving factor for my continued education as an adult. And my passion for this industry is I understand firsthand. What it's like to struggle with the idea of learning and this formal construct that a lot of times our schools or education systems like to put in place to make everybody fit inside of that box. And I don't feel like there's one box. That everyone can fit in.

And so to your earlier point thank you for the introduction, but my advocacy and my passion is around encouraging everyone to be lifelong learners, because once you understand the power of learning. You can take control over your future, and you're really unstoppable as a human. Okay,

Melissa

very good. Now, this actually segues very nicely into my next question for you. Often you hear a lot of the times from older adults that it's too late to go back to school, or I missed my calling, or I'm too old to start over. So my question for you is actually two parts. How do you feel about those phrases or the phrase too late tied to learning? And what is your opinion on learning through higher education versus possibly learning through the workplace? What are some pros and cons there?

Keith

I think there's no such thing as ever too late except But I was a dancer and I can tell you that my body is telling me that now it is too late to continue to be in a dancer. So there are some things where, yes, it can be too late. But learning is definitely not one of those things. And in my opinion, you should be learning for your entire lifetime. That's hence lifelong learning means that for the trajectory of your life, you're going to be learning.

to Your second question in terms of higher education versus work experience. They bring different advantage points and also different challenges. I think you can't replace the practical experience, that hands on experience. It's extremely valuable. For me personally, I think it was great that my higher education came later in my life.

To where what I was learning had relevance and context and I understood and I knew how to apply it because I had that real world experience versus when I tried to start my higher education younger at 16, 17, I just didn't understand how to apply it. I think that there is a need for both, and the relevance and contextualization is what's a really valuable, important concept of maybe doing the higher education later in life.

If I had kids, I would advocate for them to get a job, get that experience, that practice, go back and get their higher education once they had a place where they could actually apply

Melissa

it. Now, of course, we want to get to your book, which, by the way, is a huge feat in itself, taking the time to sit down, do the research, compile your thoughts, and then have it published, of course, so congratulations there. But the Trusted Learning Advisor, as it's known, I know there are several topics that are addressed and discussed, but could you give us a high level overview of how it redefines a learning leader in today's organizations?

Keith

So I've been in the industry for over 23 years. I started when I was five, if you're trying to do the math. And I spent the majority of that time as an order taker, letting somebody else decide who, what, where, when, why, and how a learning intervention needed to occur, and then giving me or my team that order, and then waiting for us to execute it, and we would execute it. And to put it mildly, I am exhausted with being treated like an order taker, and I know a lot of our industry is.

And, regardless of the amount of experience that I had or the potential value that I could be providing in organizations, this is how we were treated. So this book is a culmination of those skills, those strategies, those best practices that I've learned that over the years have helped me and my teams to overcome being treated like order takers and that the preconceived notions and biases that our stakeholders often have towards us. The book is.

Part manifesto, part toolkit, part motivational mentor. That's helping to support every level of L and D or talent practitioners to develop the skills and capabilities that we need to be strategic business partners that are embedded in the business who are. Sought after, listened to, trusted. That's what all of us strive to achieve, I think as leaders in our organizations. But if you think about specifically, how does it help learning leaders, talent development leaders?

We have a tremendous amount of value that we can be providing to the business. And this book is a guide into how you can build those relationships, become a strategic business partner with your stakeholders so that they can recognize the value that you have to provide to the organization. Because our job is simply to support the talent. And we look at what is the most important resource in every organization.

Melissa

And one follow up question for those who maybe haven't worked within the corporate sector or an organization where there's a shared service function like learning and development. Maybe the perception for people who have not come up in learning and development may say you have a doctorate in education. You have a master's in education. How is the business not? Taking you as a trusted learning advisor already.

Can you speak to some of the challenges of liaising with some of the functional groups, sales marketing, and although you have that experience in education, the business has expertise in their specific function. So how do you break down those barriers?

Keith

It's a great question, but let me just respond to the first part of that my credentials haven't changed the way I'm treated, honestly. I think it's important that I share that because I had this expectation that once I got those credentials. That was it. And I would be invited into the room and to the conversations and to be able to drive those strategies and I can say that it's not really changed.

It is a constant journey for us to be treated like trusted learning advisors, for us to be treated like strategic business partners. And it comes down to the way that we act, the way that we behave, our credibility, our experience, our expertise. But to your specific question, it comes down to our relationships.

That's really the core essence of what it means to have a seat at the table or to be building your own table and to be in those conversations with any of those other business units or stakeholders, its trust and its relationships. And so that's the most important thing that we can be focusing on is understanding from our stakeholders perspective. What are their challenges? How can we help them achieve their goals? Another way that I like to think of it is.

Our job is to make our stakeholders the hero of their own story. It's not to make L& D look good. And for so many years I'll raise my hand and say I did it as well. I had my own goals that I wanted to accomplish, and I had my own agendas. And so L& D is often segregated from the rest of the business units, deriving their own agenda, their own value propositions, their own measurements. And it's only relevant to us.

And at the end of the day, we need to be focusing on what's relevant to those stakeholders.

Melissa

Also in your book, you discuss the shift from transactional to strategic learning. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Keith

So I'm going to share with you three kind of Examples of that. There's many more in the book. So check out the book. But traditionally, order takers are transactional. So to begin with, learning leaders need to broaden their perspective beyond just delivering training or learning programs. And this means going back to my earlier statement that we've got to broaden our business context in how our business is operating.

So I think that's where you were headed is do we have to be subject matter experts in the business? We don't have to be experts, but we have to have an understanding of our business of our stakeholders so that we can speak their language because more often than not, we're using our own vocabulary, our own lexicons, our own definitions and acronyms, and it's not our stakeholders job to understand us. It is our job to understand our stakeholders.

So ultimately it's about aligning our learning strategies with the organizational goals and being able to demonstrate how learning initiatives contribute to those objectives. And this alignment is absolutely critical. It's not just delivering those solutions, but ensuring the solution drive tangible business outcome. So that's number one. Number two. Building robust relationships with our stakeholders across the organization.

I know I'm repeating myself, but it needs to be repeated because so often it's overlooked. It requires stepping out of that traditional L and D silo and engaging with those different departments and being embedded across the organization, looking Holistically in following the concepts of systems thinking, and I'll give an example to listeners and viewers. Finance your chief financial officer. That should be one of your key stakeholders.

We should be partnering with every business unit, hr, marketing, IT, and finance. The chief financial officer. That person's role is to determine the value of every business unit in the organization and to drive value for the organization. If you don't have a relationship with them, how are they determining the value of the work that you're providing? I don't know.

That's why you need to build a relationship with them to make sure that you're connected and that you see them as a stakeholder and they see you as a valuable contributing member to the organization. It's about becoming a partner rather than just a service provider. And then number three, it's fostering a continuous.

Learning culture within that organization, this means not just focusing on formal training programs, but really promoting and facilitating informal and social and knowledge sharing and supporting employee led learning initiatives. I know that was a mouthful, but those are at least three kind of examples that I would share in terms of. Your question.

Melissa

No, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, I wanted to talk a little bit more about that value that you mentioned, because I'm sure in your experience, you've seen that success metrics are often hard to display back to the business, right? It's more of a long game versus short term, quarter over quarter, maybe, halves over halves, maybe even the year. Sometimes you need longer than that to demonstrate the effectiveness of L& D within an organization.

So given that, can you share your insights on what success metrics should focus on today?

Keith

Absolutely. And this is going to be maybe a little bit controversial and different from other speakers, but this is my perspective based on my experience. The most important recommendation I could share for this question is this. Success is dependent on your context. It doesn't matter what I deem as success criteria or what you or what anyone else in the industry says is the success criteria we should be monitoring. It is solely dependent on the need of what you are solving for your stakeholder.

Are you solving for them? Too often. We try to put these generalizations on success metrics and make these sweeping statements that, oh, we should be measuring this or measuring that. But if we're doing that, and as LMD practitioners, we're sharing these sentiments about measuring something we deem valuable, but our stakeholders don't agree. In the end, are we successful? And I have spent so many years failing at this because we were creating these success metrics in isolation.

And I thought that we were being successful. And then I package this up and I go back to my stakeholder and present it. And they say, no, that's not important to us. That's not valuable to us. So we have to ask ourselves the question, are we measuring what is important and necessary and driving value to the business? If you're not, that's where you need to be focusing on. So start first with what business problems are we trying to solve for, and then figure out how you measure that impact.

But if I were to answer the question a little bit more tactically, I would say this. Skill acquisition remains a fundamental metric. Absolutely. It's essential that we need to understand how the skill acquisition is impacting business outcomes. We need to measure how newly acquired skills are translated into improved performance and higher productivity. And ultimately. Contributing to the overall organization goal. Also, fostering a culture of continuous learning is equally as important.

In today's changing business environment, the ability of an organization to adapt and evolve continuously is absolutely critical. I know I started with not creating a generalized statement. I think it starts first contextually understanding what's important to your organization, the business goals, your stakeholders, but I think also we can look at skill acquisition, how it's improving performance metrics, higher productivity.

Decreasing turnover and then also fostering a continuous learning environment.

Melissa

Your book also makes note of future forward frameworks. What does that mean exactly? When I

Keith

talk about future forward frameworks for learning leaders, I'm really referring to innovative approaches and strategies that help them meet the needs of the learners. And to me, innovation is like The word interesting, it can have so many different contexts or meaning to it. So innovation to me means that you're just doing something differently. It's not necessarily technology driven. It's just applying a different mindset, a different approach.

So the frameworks that I talk about in the book are crucial for those who may feel that Maybe their current learning methods are falling short in terms of effectiveness or relevance, but specifically a future forward framework means moving beyond that traditional one size fits all approach.

And I go back to the comment a little few minutes ago in terms of There's not a one size fits all approach when it comes to L& D, especially organizational L& D, for me, it's more about adopting a holistic learner centric approach that recognizes we have diverse needs. We have learning approaches or maybe preferences. We have career aspirations of individual learners.

And so what I look at is I'm a design thinking practitioner and I use design thinking to help me conduct qualitative research in the organization to figure out what do our learners need and then from there work backwards to create a framework that can help support them. And so really in summary, my, my answer is it's just not a one size fits all approach.

Melissa

And I wanted to ask this question as well, too, because I'm sure a lot of people in the industry would probably agree and or remember a time where they were in this position. What would you consider a best practice working with functional leaders who maybe do not share the same school of thought of a continuous learning culture? What are your

Keith

thoughts? I think to be honest, I think that's most leaders. Most leaders want that immediate return on, I'm going to say investment, although I don't care for that phrase ROI, they want that immediate impact, even the ones who believe in lifelong learning or continuous learning, it's like there's two pathways.

Oh, in theory, yes, lifelong learning and continuous learning is important for the organization, except for me, when I need to get some results now, I want that value, I want that impact today. So I don't have, six, 12 months. That's something that we consistently face, I think, with every leader. And that's where your influence skills, your negotiating skills, your research skills come into play.

One of my preferred approaches and tactics is I try to take myself out of the equation and I don't want I don't want my stakeholders to say that's your perspective, Keith, you don't know my business. I don't, I want my name kept out of it. I consider myself an intermediary between other leaders in the organization or in our industry data. So for example, I use World Economic Forum. I use McKinsey Global Institute. I use Deloitte and I pull from these research firms.

To try and demonstrate the point, for example, if you're a question about the sales leader, just wants that one day workshop. What's the problem we're actually trying to solve? What's the behavior we're trying to change? Is it a tool? Is it a process? Is it actually performance driven? Is there something else in the value chain that's stopping them understanding all of those pieces?

But then if I'm trying to package a solution for them, it's Using the other data that exists other experts in the field, bringing other voices into the conversation so that it's less about me trying to prove a point and change their mindset, but about helping them become educated in how we actually drive change through learning and development. And that's a slippery slope because as I mentioned earlier, it's not their job to understand our tools, our frameworks and such.

It's our job to figure out how do we translate everything that we know about the right way to learn, when it is the right appropriate time, translate that into a way that's meaningful, understandable, and digestible to those stakeholders. And that's the real skill set that we have to constantly be developing.

Melissa

As you may know, the organizational landscape is rapidly evolving due to technological advancements. Of course this year, as an example, generative AI was in the news quite a bit. So how can learning leaders stay ahead of the curve and adapt some of their strategies to meet the demands of the modern workplace?

Keith

I've had a number of conversations recently with chief learning officers and learning leaders even higher education professors, where they have not yet started to use Gen AI, or specifically I'll just call out ChatGPT. The answer to your question is you stay ahead by being aware by learning. We're all learning right now. We don't know how this is going to play out, but there is one thing that we know. There is no version of the future that exists without AI.

AI, like technology or the internet, is here and it is going to be here for our future. The best thing that you can do is embrace it, understand it, learn it, figure out how you can leverage it to do its job. Its job is to help augment you, to free you up from some of those Tasks and activities that technology can do better than us so that you can focus on your core skill set.

So the answer to your question is we should be absolutely embracing technology and tools when it comes to helping our organizations learn. And the way that you start is by simply Learning them yourselves. You don't have to become an A. I. Expert. It's evolving so quickly. I think last year towards the end of last year, there was maybe 30 40 companies focusing on this. Now there's thousands. It's evolving every single day, but you have to stay abreast of that.

And as a trusted learning advisor, you have to be aware of all of the tools that exist. I view our job as Yeah. We need to have the biggest toolkit possible. And that means you understand everything from LMS, LXP, MOOC, AR, VR, MR, AI. What are the use cases for each of those? What are the vendors that are out there? When should you use one, not the other? What's the difference between SuccessFactors and EdCast and Docebo?

Should you have an LXP and why should you have an LXP so that when these organizational problems arise, when our stakeholders bring us a problem, we identify a problem, we go into our tool kit and we find the right tool to solve that problem. And that means that we have to keep our biases out of it. It's not what tool I like. It's what tool is going to solve the right problem. And part of those tools include things like.

Kirkpatrick's Level 4, Phillip's ROI, LTIM's, Wilhelm Thalheimer's LTIM model. You may not like Kirkpatrick's Level 4, but you should understand it, because your stakeholders may know what a Level 3 is and be asking you about a Level 3. You should know the difference between, LTIM and Kirkpatrick. So long story short, it's our responsibility to have an awareness and an understanding of all the tools that exist. It can feel overwhelming, but we don't have to be know it alls.

We need to be learn it alls. I'm not an expert in every single one of those tools, but I have an awareness of what they are. So when that problem does arrive, I can figure out which tool do I need to use. to help solve that problem.

Melissa

And that probably answers some of my next question for you. In your book, also, you emphasize human talent as the cornerstone of organizational success. Can you share some best practices around talent development that you believe every learning leader should be aware of? I believe you just answered a good portion of it, but anything else you have to offer would be great.

Keith

Get the book. It's all in there. If you want to know everything that I think about that, it's literally all in there. As I mentioned, it's, I wrote it as a way to download my 25 years of experience and it is truly a practical guide. It is not a thought leader, ethereal book. It's here's the, you want to build relationships. Here are best practices. You want to build trust? Here are best practices. You want to build your skills and learning practitioner? Here are the best practices.

So in terms of answering your question, I would say definitely check out the book. There are other tools like design thinking. Every talent development practitioner should be fully aware and immersing themselves in design thinking as a tool to be solving problems. If you think about what do we do as talent development leaders, we develop humans. And our humans have problems and we need to solve those problems.

Design thinking is a fantastic tool for that because it is a framework that gives us a structure that we can follow. And what I love about frameworks and methodologies is in some way it's a shield. Earlier you were asking what happens when your stakeholders, push back and they don't want to follow along? I use these methodologies as my shield to say, Hey, it's not Keith that's saying that it's design thinking. This is the methodology. It's a scientific methodology. Stanford uses it.

These are all the companies that use it. Here's how, why we should use it and the value of it. And it takes the individual, the human me out of it. So it's less about my voice and it's more about solving the problem with this method, with this methodology. So I would leave that one with you, a human centered design thinking.

Melissa

I have more to read. That is for sure. FInally, before we get into some more light hearted questions, I would love to ask your opinion on your newer title of doctor. In your honest opinion, what changed for you after you turned in your dissertation, which is a huge feat, and walked the stage to receive your degree? How did the Penn CLO program impact your career, do you think, if you could pick one thing?

Keith

If I were going to pick one thing, I would say that It's made me a better, for lack of better words, truer learning leader in the sense that I know how to research now and I also know how to write. That's, I think that's the biggest the biggest value proposition for me is that I know how to coherently write. I know how to research. I know how to formulate. But also it gave me a credibility to some people. Like I said, it hasn't changed all of the mindsets of stakeholders.

It's given me a community of other leaders. And I think that , is one of the. biggest value propositions is that we're not going to solve this by ourself. No C. L. O. Is working siloed. My network is my greatest, I think value proposition is I'm connected to some of the most brilliant thought leaders in the world. And when I'm faced with a challenge Or a question I can go to them and talk about it.

And so I think understand how to research me in a much better writer and connecting to brilliant thought leaders in my cohorts in the program has made me a better learning leader.

Melissa

I Enjoyed your candid responses. Very insightful. Thank you so much. And I would now love to spend some time on some more lighthearted questions, if that's okay?

Keith

Absolutely.

Melissa

All right. So here's the first one. What would you recommend as one out of the box, unconventional way to learn something new and why?

Keith

I think role playing.

Immersive role playing is one of the best ways to learn, at least for me, it gives you the ability to practice, going back to trusted learning advisors, influence skills, negotiation skills, being able to have difficult conversations while these are valuable as a trusted learning advisor, it's valuable for any leader or any human And also something that a lot of people struggle with, and I found that role playing those discussions, those situations gives you the opportunity

to practice and until the words come out of your mouth, until your body language is experiencing that situation it's raw, it's new, you don't know how you're necessarily going to respond, and the more times that you can do that, the better you become, it's practice. Can you share a quirky or unusual skill or hobby that you've picked up that others may be interested in? My current skill is learning AI, learning chat GPT and how to Use it to make me better.

And I love just trying different things with it every single day. It's my, my significant other has worried that I'm having too strong of a relationship with chat GPT, which now I just call it chat. And I, I'm talking about it every day. So I guess, a new hobby slash skill is learning how to use AI to. Free me up and make me better at what I do.

Melissa

Alright, I would love to know what keeps you up at

Keith

night. As a learning leader right now, what I'm concerned most about is the fact that Every leader in organizations across the globe are asking themselves, how can AI make our organization faster, more money, and more effective, and save costs? And when we say save costs, what we're talking about is resources, our human talent. Every leader is asking themselves that. Right now, we're not seeing a massive wave in job reductions as of a I, but it is coming.

And what keeps me up at night is my concern that as learning leaders, we're not getting ahead of this curve. We're not necessarily looking at our organization to figure out what roles. might be at risk. And we've been talking about the future of learning for years now.

And by the way, I'm not a fan of that phrase because I feel like when we use the word future, we're giving ourself permission not to take action today and everything that we're talking about with the future of learning the future of work. Should be actionable today. And what has elevated this is AI is chat GPT. I know that in one of the organizations I work with, we could reduce our workforce by 30 percent in the next 12 months. I know that today.

I know there are conversations happening behind closed doors where this is being discussed. No one is discussing it publicly. So it's my responsibility as a learning leader. to be taking that information and figuring out how do I help those people? How do I help them start to upskill, reskill, second skill today, even if it's not going to happen for 12, 18, 24 months? And I don't think that enough learning leaders are thinking about that.

So what keeps me up right now is I'm worried about our talent. I'm worried that as learning leaders, we're missing the opportunity to get ahead of this discussion by figuring out what roles might be at risk. Yes, our businesses might not have announced them. HR might not know yet. Our stakeholders might not know yet, but we can know at least we can have some insight. Again, McKinsey Global Institute, World Economic Forum, the data exists on roles that AI can do better than us.

So if we already have that data today, we should be planning for that right now. So answer your question, I'm worried that we're just not doing enough right now to help our talent prepare for what's coming soon.

Melissa

So saying that, I'm curious to your thoughts of the news headlines that we've seen in late 2022 into 2023 with layoffs, yet there is a talent shortage with necessary skills that hiring leaders are looking for. So how do we close that gap? Knowing that there's talented, skilled workers out there, but some of these positions that are open in organizations have highly prescriptive requirements. How do we close that gap?

Keith

There's always this question of whose responsibility is it when we talk about lifelong learning and upskilling? Is it the organization's responsibility? Is it the governor's responsibility? Is it? The individual employee's responsibility. I'm going to say something a little bit controversial. I think it's the employee's responsibility. It's my responsibility as a human, as a worker, to make sure that I have the skills that I need to do my job.

That means that it's also my responsibility to understand how to look. It the workforce, how to look at what's changing all of the things that we've talked about today are available to everybody. What I believe organizations need to be doing is to create opportunities to reinforce this point of being lifelong learners. So I don't expect my organization to upskill me and to make sure that I have a career for the rest of my life. They're looking out for the skills that they need.

The answer to your question is the skill gaps. The layoffs are real. The talent shortage is real. The layoffs are also real. I think that we need to continuously be advocating for lifelong learning, create equitable opportunity for everyone to continue their learning, create space and time in the organization. If you look at organizations, they'll talk about, yes, continuous learning is important. Lifelong learning is important. And then you ask, how much time are you giving your employees?

each year to learn. And I find that many can't answer that question. They don't have a set number of hours. So the most basic thing that every organization can do is give a minimum number of required hours that every employee needs to have to continuously be upskilling, developing themselves. 40 hours is typically the number when an organization does say it. One week is not enough.

One week is absolutely not enough, so you've got to figure out what's right for your organization, what's right for the roles, but create space, create equitable opportunities, things like tuition reimbursement is not the same as tuition assistance. Tuition reimbursement assumes the employee can carry that cost.

Often the people that we're talking about are those that are hourly employees that cannot carry the cost of tuition, the cost of certifications for six months or however long the certification is. They're incurring the interest rate on top of that, which organizations don't reimburse. So it's actually not net even, it's a negative balance. The organization should be focusing on tuition assistance rather than tuition reimbursement.

These are some examples of creating equitable opportunities to really have a lifelong learning culture.

Melissa

Speaking of lifelong learning, I have just learned today that you were a former street jazz dancer and a backup dancer at one point for Christina Aguilera. Of course, I need to know more information on this. Were you in music videos or was this for concerts and

Keith

shows? I am in a music video. I'm not going to say which one. And it was also for some shows. Right before the Bionic Tour. But then she ended up getting the voice and the Bionic Tour was canceled, unfortunately. I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to have had a professional career and things that I love, I love what I do now. I'm extremely passionate about it. This is my calling, but I also have to have a completely separate career.

is as a dancer what I'll say now is I'm paying for it for the rest of my life between back issues and just every day I can still feel the pain.

Melissa

Okay. And what was the name of that music video one more time?

Keith

The one I didn't tell you? It's not myself tonight.

Melissa

Okay. I will have to check that out. But I want to say thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed the conversation and you had some really great points. And of course, there's more to read up on in your book, The Trusted Learning Advisor. Definitely go ahead and grab your copy if interested. And then Keith, one question for you as the last step, if audience members would like to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

Keith

One quick comment before I answer that. Even if you're not interested in the book, you should still grab a copy because it is for every single L and D talent practitioner. After you grab it and start reading it, then you might become interested. Sometimes you need that push. This is your push. Get the book. To continue connecting with me, LinkedIn is a great way. My personal website is keithkeating. com or if you want to learn more about the book, very easy website, the trusted learning advisor.

Melissa

Thank you again so much. And we did it. Okay. Keith, we finished our first episode. Thank you so much.

Keith

Absolutely. Thanks, Melissa. I appreciate it. Take care.

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